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The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) faces an uncertain financial future over the next five years. With debt service payments increasing, along with other costs, the MBTA will face sizeable budget gaps forcing the Authority to choose among unhealthy options to close these structural deficits. These options primarily include: further dramatic fare increases, service reductions, or more borrowing.

Companies with immediate past histories of shoddy work and fraudulent practices are being rewarded with billions of dollars in federal contracts. The data suggest that the process by which the federal government currently spends $422 billion per year in taxpayer funds is insufficient to ensure that the American people receive good quality for goods and services purchased for the American people.

Though not as sexy as fighting acid rain, global warming, or the desecration of rain forests, the environmental movement is turning its attention to indoor pollution, warning of dangers that may lurk in cleaning products used on living room furniture, in toilet bowls, and on desktops.

For the first time in over 30 years, insurance companies will be allowed to use discriminatory factors in selling auto insurance. While banning some of the most obviously unfair factors, the proposed regulations permit insurers to use many other factors that could harm low-income and minority drivers, including factors that act as proxies for the very factors that are banned. In order to protect against discrimination and to ensure that driving record is the primary factor insurers use in setting premiums and in underwriting, it is necessary to list expressly all the rating and underwriting factors that may be used by insurers.